Several plaintiffs led by officials in Cape May County, New Jersey, filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration over development of a large offshore wind farm near the county’s coastline.
“As we’ve said many times, we spent the better part of two years trying to negotiate with Orsted to redesign this project in a way that would cause less damage to the environment and less damage to our tourism and fisheries interests,” Cape May County Board of Commissioners Director Len Desiderio said in a statement in announcing the lawsuit against several federal agencies.
Explaining that the county’s proposals “fell on deaf ears,” Mr. Desiderio claimed that federal and state regulators “rubber-stamped” permits to allow the construction of the Ocean Wind 1 project.
“We believe the federal permitting process was fatally flawed, and we have assembled a great legal team to pursue these issues in the federal courts,” he continued. “There is far too much at stake to do nothing. This suit brings together important stakeholders in Cape May County willing to fight to protect our economy, our environment and our future.”
Other than the county, the Cape May County Chamber of Commerce, the Greater Wildwood Hotel Motel Association, Clean Ocean Action, the Garden State Seafood Association, and several seafood restaurants joined the suit against the federal government.
The lawsuit, filed in the Federal District Court for the District of New Jersey, alleges that several federal regulatory agencies violated multiple laws around the environment, endangered species, and preserving natural resources.
“Two things have been conclusively established so far,” Michael J. Donohue, a special counsel for the county, said in a statement. “First, these are nonpartisan issues, with leading voices on both sides of the aisle in New Jersey and throughout the country now voicing the same concerns about the negative impacts of offshore wind projects that Cape May County has been raising for the past two years.”
“Second, constructing this project and all of the other proposed offshore wind projects, according to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, will have no positive impact on climate change,” he added.
The suit contends that federal officials are approving wind projects without the proper consideration of environmental harm or the economic costs regarding tourism. They want the court to place a hold on Orsted’s permits and to “fix the flawed processes that were utilized to ignore important environmental, marine species, economic and historic resource protections.”
The county said underwater noise and vessel strikes during construction will harm endangered North Atlantic right whales and sea turtles, and that rotating wind turbine blades would kill migrating birds. The lawsuit also claimed the wind farm’s turbines could impact the region’s $7.4 billion tourism industry and restrict commercial fishing, which contributes roughly $270 million a year to the region’s economy.
The Department of the Interior has not issued a public comment on the matter. The Epoch Times has contacted the agency for comment.
The Ocean Wind 1 project was awarded under the Obama administration in 2015 to Orsted. In March 2021, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management initiated the project’s permitting process before it was approved earlier this year.
Approval of Ocean Wind by the Interior Department is the administration’s latest move toward meeting its goal of developing 30 gigawatts of offshore wind in the United States by 2030 on every shoreline. Interior previously approved Vineyard Wind off of Massachusetts and South Fork off of Rhode Island, both of which are under construction.
“Today’s approval for the Ocean Wind 1 project is another milestone in our efforts to create good-paying union jobs while combating climate change and powering our nation,” Ms. Haaland said in a statement in July.
Ocean Wind could power up to 380,000 homes and create 3,000 jobs from development through a three-year construction cycle, according to the Interior Department.
Legal challenges to previously approved wind farm projects in the Atlantic have so far been unsuccessful. Earlier this month, a U.S. judge rejected challenges to federal environmental permits and construction approvals for a $4 billion offshore wind farm near Massachusetts, which commercial fishing groups have claimed will harm whales and impair their businesses.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston last week tossed the final two federal district court lawsuits directly challenging the Vineyard Wind project roughly 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, which would be the first commercial-scale offshore wind farm in the country.
